Illustrated Edition of the Life and Escape of Wm. Wells Brown from American Slavery: Written by HimselfBrown, William Wells
History
Illustrated Edition of the Life and Escape of Wm. Wells Brown from American Slavery: Written by Himself
Brown, William Wells
Enslaved persons -- United States -- Biography; Slavery -- Missouri
To-day you leave the land of your nativity, in which you have been
reared and treated as a slave--a chattel personal--a marketable
commodity--though it claims to be a republican and Christian land,
the freest of the free, the most pious of the pious--for the shores of
Europe; on touching which, your shackles will instantly fall, your limbs
expand, your spirit exult in absolute personal freedom, as a man, and
nothing less than a man. Since your escape from bondage, a few years
since, you have nobly devoted yourself to the cause of the three
millions of our countrymen who are yet clanking their chains in hopeless
bondage--pleading their cause eloquently and effectively, by day and by
night, in season and out of season, before the people of the Free States
(falsely so called) of America, at much personal hazard of being seized
and hurried back to slavery. Not to forsake that cause, but still more
powerfully to aid it, by enlisting the sympathies, and consolidating
the feelings and opinions of the friends of freedom and universal
emancipation in the old world in its favour and against the atrocious
slave system, do you bid farewell to the land of whips and chains
to-day. God--the God of the oppressed, the poor, the needy, the
defenceless--be with you, to guide, strengthen, aid, and bless you
abundantly! Three millions of slaves are your constituents, and you are
their legitimate and faithful representative. With a mother, sister, and
three brothers, yet pining in hopeless servitude, with the marks of the
slavedriver’s lash upon your body, you cannot but “remember them that
are in bonds as bound with them.” Speak in trumpet tones to Europe, and
call upon the friends of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” there, to
cry, “Shame upon recreant and apostate America, which flourishes the
Declaration of Independence in one hand, and the whip of the negro
overseer in the other!” Challenge all that is free, all that is humane,
all that is pious, across the Atlantic, to raise a united testimony
against American slaveholders and their abettors, as the enemies of God
and the human race! So shall that cry and that testimony cause the knees
of the oppressor to smite together, the Bastile of slavery to tremble
to its foundation, and the hearts of the American Abolitionists to be
filled with joy and inspired afresh! Tell Europe that our watchword is,
“Immediate--unconditional emancipation for the slave,” and the motto we
have placed on our anti-slavery banner is, “No Union with Slaveholders,
religiously or politically!”
You have secured the respect, confidence, and esteem of thousands of the
best portion of the American people; and may you continue faithful to
the end, neither corrupted by praise, nor cast down by opposition, nor
intimidated by any earthly power!
Accept the assurances of my warm personal regard, and believe me to be,
Your faithful co-labourer and unwearied advocate of the best of causes,
WM. LLOYD GARRISON,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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